Will this become ‘the year winter is cancelled’?: Alberta forecasters monitor El Nino, Pacific ‘blob’

Alberta likely won’t experience the effects of El Nino until this winter, but the province could still be in for a warmer than normal summer. El Nino is a climate event that happens when warm water in the Pacific Ocean interacts with the atmosphere, causing various weather events around the world, from droughts to floods.

EDMONTON – Alberta likely won’t experience the effects of El Nino until this winter, but the province could still be in for a warmer than normal summer.

El Nino is a climate event that happens when warm water in the Pacific Ocean interacts with the atmosphere, causing various weather events around the world, from droughts to floods.

According to Environment Canada senior climatologist David Phillips, an El Nino event occurs every few years, but a major El Nino, like the one forecast by Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology this week, only happens every 15 years or so.

But El Nino isn’t the only climate phenomena messing with the mercury in Alberta this year. Phillips explains that the “blob” — a mass of warm water in the Pacific Ocean that originated in the Gulf of Alaska earlier this year and moved down to the coast of British Columbia — could be behind Environment Canada’s current projections that Alberta will have a warmer than average summer this year.

“If that blob continues, if it stays warm … and then you add to that El Nino, it may compliment each other and then it may be the year winter is cancelled,” Phillips said, He added that though forecasting isn’t guaranteed, he and his colleagues are quite confident about their projections for a hot prairie summer.

Even though many Albertans might be gleeful at the thought of another mild winter, Phillips said El Nino can also mean drought and increased forest fires, which happened the last time a significant El Nino event occurred in 1997 and 1998. That winter, Edmonton received half its regular snowfall and temperatures were as much as two degrees warmer than normal. Phillips said the following summer was one of the most costly forest fire seasons on record for Alberta.

Richard Carr, a fire research analyst with Natural Resources Canada, said when his department begins it fire forecast maps next February, they’ll take the effects of El Nino into consideration.

As for drought, Alberta Federation of Agriculture vice-president and farmer Humphrey Banack said there’s no point in panicking.

“Science isn’t solid enough for us to change what we’re doing … We’ve had predictions of El Nino before and we still do pretty well crop-wise,” Banack said.

Banack farms near Camrose and said he isn’t planning to change any of his plans for next year yet. He said if dry conditions do occur, he and other farmers will manage the risks as best they can.

“If the highway in front of you is straight and dry, you don’t take your foot off the gas if in 50 miles you might have a curve,” he said. “That’s the way farmers are looking at it today.”

HERE COMES THE BLOB

The red splotch shows the progression of the “blob” — warmer than normal water that moved from the Gulf of Alaska down the Pacific coast, growing and shrinking over the past year. The blob contributed to the mild 2014-15 winter in Alberta and could potentially enhance any effect El Nino has on the weather in the coming year. Image courtesy of Environment Canada.

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